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This bit of history was brought about by one of you readers questioning what it was like in the old days. The Mother of the family had to be very efficient as so much of the everyday things were hand made, such as lye soap, used only for washing clothes. Lye soap was rather strong for hand use. Earlier generations even made the lye, used in making the soap. Lye was made by soaking wood ashes for a certain length of time, then draining off the fluid lye.

This is changing the subject, a little, but who cares? There was a fun time that came around every year or so, filling the mattresses. I'm not sure that they were called mattresses, I just

remembered, they were called “ticks”, and were made from a cloth called “ticking”. It was pretty sturdy material and I am sure Mother didn't have to replace them very often. The filling, was another story. The straw ticking would wear out in time, but could be replaced at threshing time. They were by no means,” Posture Pedics”, nor were they spring loaded but we kids thought they were bouncy and fun. There was another ticking that the older folks seemed to like, the “feather bed”. I jumped on one, (when nobody was watching) but it was too thin for my liking. Sorry about this but a song just came to my attention,

“Go tell Aunt Roada go tell Aunt Roada

Go tell Aunt Roada the old gray goose is dead

The one that she's been saving

The one that she's been saving

The one that she's been saving

To make a feather bed”

Any way, I got that off my chest. Now, where was I when I got side tracked? Oh Yes! Mother still made our own cheese, when I wasn't very old, possibly, 5 or 6 years, and still living on the farm, at Hollensberg. I remember watching her make cheese. She used a copper boiler and filled it about half full with whole milk and then put two chemicals. One, I remember as “rennet”. The other, I've forgotten. Any way, it made the milk start to solidify and the fluid, “whey” separated from the curds. She then took a long butcher knife and cut up the curds and wrapped them in cheese-cloth. After squeezing out as much of the whey as she could by hand she put it in a press, made just for that purpose, and squeezed the remaining whey out of it. I don't remember how many loaves she made at one time but seemed to be two or more. What bothered me, though, was it was not ready to eat. I know, because I tried it. It looked about like one of those rubbery eraser, and tasted like it, a well. No! It had to be put in a cool dark place for about 2 or 3 months,or when it turned from off white, to yellow cheese.

Almost very farmer had his own milk cows and sold cream. It was, along with their chicken eggs, the main source of their living. I have to tell something I thought was a little amusing, even after I found he was right. Dad Boice went to an agricultural college in Brookings, South Dakota for a couple of years before he and G'ma were married, and he always spoke of cows that were used for milking, as “milch” cows. I have no idea whether the name it is still used any where.

There was a story told of a farmer bringing unclean, sour cream into this cream station, which every town had. The man operating the station, complained to the farmer, but with no results. It got so bad that he turned him in to the authorities. This Inspector went out to the farmer's place and found it to be terribly filthy and 10 gallons of cream were sitting there that the farmer intended to sell. The Inspector declared the cream to be unfit for human consumption and to prevent him from ever selling the cream, he dumped some rennet into it, making it imposable to be tested for butterfat which determined the price of the cream.

Why did I bring all that up? I haven't the foggiest idea. I never know where I'm headed when I start one of these. Something that happened 50 to 90 years ago is right at the tip of my tongue, but why I came up with this particular subject, who knows? Oh well!